


i can teach you to bottle fame

by Serendipity1



Category: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Harry Potter Crossover - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serendipity1/pseuds/Serendipity1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Korra needs a Potions tutor, Asami needs people to start understanding muggleborn issues already, someone is literally stealing the magic out of people, and prophecies give Professor BeiFong a headache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which asami might be part veela and korra is secretly five

Korra just doesn’t notice people. It’s a recurring problem she has. It’s not that she actually means to be callous or tactless or any of that crap, it’s more that she’s usually focused on other stuff, like how awesome a Beater she is, and did everyone see that really amazing trick she pulled in the game last week, or sometimes she’s focused on how she really fucked up the Arithmancy homework.

But mostly, her life is so packed with stuff she doesn’t really get how some people can actually notice others; how they can get to know them just by reading their facial expressions, can keep track of all the kids in their class or even their House. To be honest the first years kind of blend into one solid lump, and the second and third have similar problems. She knows all the Quidditch players of every House, though, and a handful of other people, and she’s on actual Best Friend terms with Bolin the Hufflepuff Chaser who is a real pal and helps out with her Herbology homework all the time.

And that’s pretty much it. Most people know her, most people seem to like her a lot, going by all the cheering she gets during and after the games, but very few of them make it onto her short list of people whose names she can match to their faces. Korra figures that’s not even a big problem, like how many people does someone need to have as good friends anyway? But it does make for awkward moments sometimes. Like that time she offended someone who apparently had crushed on her since they were nine- awkward, she still doesn’t know the guy’s name.

Or now, when she’s trying to justify herself to Bolin. “There are so many Gryffindors,” she says, patiently. “I have no idea how I’m supposed to remember the name of one particular Gryffindor. She’s not even in Quidditch.”

“Wow, Korra,” Bolin laughs, incredulously. “That’s not actually- I mean, you shouldn’t have to use that to remember people. Are you serious? You really don’t know her? She was a prefect for two years! She’s Head Girl!”

“Oh, well, _prefects_ ,” Korra says, immediately categorizing them as a lower life form with her tone of voice.

“Asami Sato,” Bolin says, with great patience, “Is not a typical prefect. Obviously not, since you haven’t been in any trouble with her, and I swear you intentionally find these people and blow things up just to get detentions. For the fun of it. And then your House loses points and everyone hates you.”

“Yeah, but I get ‘em back again,” Korra blows off the whole House point system as totally irrelevant. Why people even care about the whole thing just escapes her. You end up with the Great Hall decorated in green and silver and maybe some cheering despite Slytherins being unfairly disliked for no good reason, and that’s about it. “I got like fifty points last week in Defense Against the Dark Arts, with that vampire exercise. You weren’t there, it was with the Gryffindors. Anyway, this vampire, you know? It was-“

Bolin waves his hand in front of her face, bringing her sharply back to reality. “Dude, Korra. Focus. Asami. Your Potions partner for the next month? Kind of important.”

Basically, while Korra is, naturally, amazingly talented with most forms of magic- she excelled at Defense Against the Dark Arts despite having a more offensive method than is usually considered acceptable, breezed through Charms easily, and even managed to pull off Transfiguration relatively well, she was terrible at Potions. (That and Arithmancy. And Herbology. And probably anything that required patience without flashy results.) And even though this was her last year and she’d been managing to pull by so far, apparently she’d been slacking way too much lately for her to just get a pass.

In any case, their Potions professor had decided, in her infinite wisdom, that Korra needed a tutor and had assigned her with a willing and able teacher’s pet suck-up that Korra didn’t even know. When she was perfectly capable of finding her very own Potions helper, from her own House even, without any of this assigning her some random Gryffindor nerds. (She is already intent on disliking this Asami girl, who couldn’t be that amazing anyway if Korra hadn’t even noticed her for all seven years she’d been at Hogwarts, Head Girl or no.)

“You don’t know the names of half your form,” Bolin sighs. “Come on, give her a chance.”

“Do you know her or something?” Korra looks at him, frowning. He seems awfully keen on defending her for someone who just knows her as Head Girl. She’d tease him for having a crush, but they’re still a little shaky after Bolin revealed, last year, that he’d been carrying a torch for Korra. Right after he’d caught her necking with his older brother after a big Quidditch match. Their friendship did survive the fall-out after that, but she’s not likely to talk to him about anything along those lines for a good long while.

Bolin shrugs uncomfortably. “She was Mako’s girlfriend for most of last year,” he reveals.

And suddenly, yeah, she remembers Asami Sato. Tall, lithe, green-eyed Asami with the sort of long, dark, wavy hair that no one calls hair anymore- that’s called ‘tresses’. She remembers spending a couple months stewing in a thundercloud of jealousy and taking it out on the bludgers. Had managed to knock Mako off his broom at some point, though she’d caught him and the snitch in a steep speed dive. (The snitch was accidental, she’d batted something away from her eyes and her fingers closed onto the winged metal ball.)

She remembers cornering him in the locker room and landing that kiss on him, remembers him opening his mouth receptively and leaning into her. (Bolin’s shocked and then heart-broken expression.)

All in all it was a pretty embarrassing period of her school career, especially considering that it was short-lived and Asami was out of the picture now. She doesn’t know why, only that she and Mako had broken up and it was messy. Bolin doesn’t talk about it and getting information from Mako is damn near impossible.

“Ah,” she just says, awkwardly.

“And I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know you were behind the dungbomb incident,” he clarifies.

Korra wants to go back in time and stab herself in the eye. “Right,” she adds, cringing inwardly.

“I talk to her sometimes and she’s really nice,” Bolin continues. “So maybe even if she knew it was you, she wouldn’t like intentionally try to sabotage you out of spite. But she’s a really cool girl and I feel like you’d probably like her because you’re really cool too, you know? And maybe if she helps you out you won’t have to buy so many new cauldrons.”

“I blew the thing up once. Just once!”

“You sent cockroach legs and bat guts flying into my face!” Bolin gestures wildly, as though trying to show a massively catastrophic event, “Do you know how gross that is? And I had no eyebrows for a week!”

Korra groans. “I bought you sooo many sugar quills to make up for that. And chocolate frogs, and that really weird exploding jawbreaker you like. I thought I’d purchased your silence.”

“I will never forget the guts,” Bolin says with conviction. “Never.”

So maybe she does need a little help. And maybe Asami is a god at everything Korra sucks at. That doesn’t mean she has to like it. So when she heads down to the dungeons to meet her new- Potion’s aide, or study partner, or whatever they’ve decided to call it, she can feel the scowl pulling down on the corners of her mouth and furrowing her brows. Probably she should be putting on a positive attitude for something like this, but she’s resenting the whole thing so much that positivity is difficult.

* * *

 

The classroom is empty, which always looks strangely abandoned. It’s just the jars of anonymous swimming creatures and organs, and the shelves of empty glass vials and bottles, and the board with its dusty white just-erased surface. Professor Pema is standing just to the left of the tremendous cauldron in which she usually brews personal supplies of potions for the hospital wing, the strange blue light from the current potion playing across her face. Tendrils, thin, twisting fingers of steam rise up into the air and shape themselves into strange designs.

Whatever it is, it smells vaguely sour and also kind of cabbagey. Hopefully nothing Korra will have to choke down after a Quidditch injury.

“You’re late,” Pema says, raising an eyebrow at her. She’s got a round, soft, sweet face and the eyebrow raise just makes her look like somebody’s mom. The eyebrow effect is just lost. Korra thinks she could try a pair of spectacles to help carry off that severe look she’s trying on, but intelligently doesn’t say it.

“A crowd of first years ran me down,” she says, with a grin that most people find charming. It does nothing for the Gryffindor Head of House, Professor BeiFong, but the vast majority of adults seem to find it adorable. Pema is one of these people, and she does nothing but sigh, fondly, and turn to the other person in the room.

“Asami, this is Korra,” she says, “Although I’m sure you two have met at least once already.”

Korra hasn’t actually met Asami so much as made faces at her from across a crowded room or stared daggers through her while she was dating Bolin’s brother, which is all very horrible and embarassing and probably doesn’t even count, so she just smiles like an idiot and nods at Asami. _Hello, please do not know about the dungbomb incident or the locker room scene. Because if you do, I do not want to explain to why I ran out of the room screaming and can no longer have a potions buddy or whatever._

Asami actually has a really nice smile. Some people smile and they look like tremendous dorks, like Bolin, and some people look really fake and cold, and some people just have this cute little shy smile, but Asami’s is- warm, and slow, and it makes her look even prettier, which is kind of monumentally unfair. Because really, how much prettier is one person allowed to get? It’s almosy sickening.

“I’ve never met her exactly, but of course I know who she is,” Asami says, still smiling at Korra.

“Of course you do?” Korra asks, feeling a little defensive because what’s that supposed to mean?

“Quidditch,” Asami explains, “I don’t play it myself and of course you’re Slytherin so I really shouldn’t be cheering for you, but I can’t help but notice you out there. You do all of the most complicated plays, and you’re captain now and it really shows in the strategy. You’re very bold.”

“Bold is an understatement,” Pema says, dryly, no doubt thinking of the occasions when Korra has been caught rulebreaking.

Korra, usually completely comfortable with receiving compliments, shrugs a shoulder awkwardly and smiles a bit. “Yeah, well,” she says, “Thanks.”

Strategy, she’s been told, is a really nice way of putting it when most of the plays she writes are mainly offensive without much of a thought to defense. It’s true, she’s not the best at subtlety and she mainly goes for the tried and true method of blowing her opponents away with a well-placed blast of force. It doesn’t always work, but it’s been working pretty well for Slytherin so far, since most of their players are big and bulky enough.

Pema talks at them for a little while, explaining how this whole thing is going to work. Basically, Korra’s supposed to find some time in her daily schedule to sit in the library with Asami or even occasionally take up some time in the dungeons, trying to brew whatever potion she’s crappiest at. Everything else is totally up to them: the time they meet, how long they meet, even the location of the meeting is up in the air. They don’t have to meet at the library if they don’t think it’s ‘conducive to a studying environment,’ since Korra is such an active person.

“I know, let’s fit a cauldron to my broomstick,” Korra says sarcastically, when she and Asami have managed to get out of the room. “I’ve never tried it before and it’s sure to be exciting.”

Asami laughs. “Actually, I’ve had something else in mind.”

Talking to her is, thankfully, much easier than she thought it would be. Maybe Korra’s kind of biased against prefects since most of them are of the stick-up-the-butt persuasion, and Head Girl seemed like a higher category of teacher’s pet. And also Asami’s pretty in that Siren’s Guide magazine way, sleek hair and burnished lips and sultry long eyelashes that Korra can’t help but think of obnoxious girly-girls who giggle over everything in that vapid way. (Never mind that she’s actually never met one of those. Ever.)

They’re heading down one of the passegways through the tapestries, and hopefully she’s not going into the Gryffindor common room or anything because some people go really weird about this whole House rivalry they’re supposed to be having. Korra decides to stick to the Potions topic, because anything else would be too awkward right now and Mako’s like the big pink elephant in the room.

“So,” she tries, “You like Quidditch?” And then wants to eat her tongue because what kind of stupid question is that? Really.

Asami turns her head and smiles at her, brightly, like she’s really interested in the topic. She supposes she must be, but she didn’t expect her eyes to light up like this over Quidditch. She doesn’t even play the game. “I love it,” she says, “I watch all the games, of course. I go home and gush about it and of course my father doesn’t understand any of it but it’s all to blame over my falling out with football and hockey. I used to watch those religiously but now they don’t seem as exciting, you know?”

Korra just stares at her and Asami- she doesn’t blush, exactly, but she does look kind of embarassed and shakes her head.

“Sorry,” she says, “I went all muggleborn for a second there. Football and hockey are muggle sports- with a ball or a puck? Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed watching sports.” Asami pushes at the wall and they step out of a mirror somewhere further away from the library that Korra had been expecting. Maybe it was going to be the Gryffindor common room after all.

“If you like sports so much, why don’t you play any?” she asks, a bit more of an edge to her tone than she really wants to be there. She expects that Asami enjoys watching it well enough but doesn’t want to get her hands dirty, or get herself sweaty, or something like that.

Asami pauses and doesn’t look at her. “Well,” she says, “Well. I’d like to.”

It doesn’t strike Korra that she sounded sad, or wistful, or something along those lines, until later. Because she’s bad at this, she’s bad at noticing people. All she says is: “Well, go ahead and do it, then.” Korra’s never had anyone or anything holding her back.

And Asami just smiles at her again, but this time it’s not as bright and warm, it’s more like an afterthought. “Alright,” she says, “So when do you want to meet to study?”

Korra’s just left with the feeling she might have missed something.

* * *

  
The Slytherin common room is actually one of the least comfortable rooms Korra has ever been in. It makes sense, the place is a dungeon, but they’re all kind of magical, so she figures that someone could have lit the place brighter. Somewhere in the Slytherin group mind, there seems to be a high tendency towards the darkly dramatic. Korra has never managed to soak up that trait. She figures she can be dramatic enough with bright colors and awesome spells and maybe a bunch of magically conjured fireworks going off behind her.

Also, someone is _always_ playing chess.

“Mageright,” she mutters, and heaves a sigh as the passageway opens up. Cool green light flickers along the stone walls, and the low-level buzzing din of students chattering among themselves is filling the room as she walks in. A quick glance tells her that yes, there is a chess match going on in front of the fireplace. Good old status quo.

Korra figures that since students from every House are in the chess club, it’s got to be a thing in more than just Slytherin. But she also figures that no one plays chess quite like them. Everyone’s got about ten thousand layers of spell alterations on their personal chess sets, the chess pieces try to demoralize each other and occasionally even assassinate the other pieces, and there’s about ten different ways to play the game. (Ravenclaw’s got forty more variations, but Slytherins boast a higher rate of success.)

Everyone looks like they’re mainly occupied with homework or exploding snap or whatever else it is they’re doing, so she picks out one of the more comfortable seats: a claw-footed armchair done in dark wood and forest green leather, and sinks into it. She’s got homework herself, yeah, but she doesn’t want to get it out here and now. And most of it’s just star maps for Divination, those are pretty easy since she received an astrolabe from an out-of-touch aunt for her birthday. She’ll just set her quill to copy and instant perfect grades.

“Hey, Captain,” an unctuous voice murmurs, and she suppresses a jolt of surprise.

“Tahno,” she says, irritated. He’s constantly trying to throw her off guard.

Tahno chuckles as though he’d seen the jolt, and leans against the wall near her chair. “Not happy to see me? Did I interrupt some private time?”

 _And why the fuck does everything the guy says have to come out sounding like a sexual innuendo_ , she wonders. What does it say about a person that they have to sound like that all the time? Korra doesn’t bother to address that, obviously, it’s the kind of weird thing he does and anyway if she tried to say he was doing it, he’d just blame it on her dirty mind or her covert desire for him or some bullcrap like that.

“You interrupted me getting ready to do my homework,” she says, frowning at him. “So unless you’ve got something important to tell me, like maybe you getting a broken leg or a rare disease and being unable to play next game, feel free to go somewhere else.”

He just smiles. “So unwelcoming. Can’t study with me here? Am I too distracting for you?”

Hexing people in the common room is bad form, but her fingers twitch towards her wand anyway. “What do you want?”

“Just the pleasure of your company.”

“Tahno, I swear to god-“

He cuts her off by pushing back from the wall and settling nearer to her chair, draping an arm over the top and leaning over her. “I just want to discuss some strategy. Our next game’s coming up soon, and it’s Gryffindor. They’re not amazing, but they might actually stand a chance against us and they’ve been winning regularly against Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. I’m thinking we need to be more… creative in our tactics.”

While Korra isn’t exactly against playing dirty, she prefers to only do it if the other team is stooping to that level as well. Otherwise it just isn’t satisfying, using cheap tricks to get a victory. Doesn’t seem like much of a real victory then, if she can’t manage to do it within the rules of the game.

Or, well, somewhat within the rules of the game.

At least _mostly_.

But like any Slytherin, she also really likes to win. And it is just a game after all, not anything huge. Not the Quidditch Cup. For that she doesn’t cheat.

“And what did you have in mind?” she asks, not looking at him. Usually his smug face makes her want to resort to good old physical violence. She rummages through her bag instead, searching for a quill or something to fiddle around with while he talks.

Most of Tahno’s ideas for more ‘creative’ planning involve some casual sabotage, like the one year that he and Ming and Shaozu, his two minions, snuck into the Hufflepuff lockers and put some spells on the broomsticks to make them fly marginally slower.

They’d told her that one after the victory, since Tahno knew she wouldn’t okay it because she was ‘so fond of that Hufflepuff Chaser’. Some other ideas had been dosing the Keeper of the Ravenclaw team with some sleep potion, and trying to enchant the snitch. Nothing too dangerous.

This time, he’s trying to push to have some of his buddies sneak in just before the game and Confund a couple of the players. Not all of them, maybe just one or two, a Chaser and maybe a Beater. It’s actually do-able, assuming that the people he chooses to do this aren’t going to get caught by someone.

“Well, if they do get caught, they’re going to say they did it on their own,” Tahno says, shrugging. “No loss for us, just a couple of our House-mates getting too invested in the game.” He doesn’t get his hands dirty if he can afford not to. “If it works, the game is in the bag. If not, it probably still is. Nothing wrong with a little insurance.”

And usually she’d be okay with this, since Confunding wears off and no one was really going to get hurt, so why not let her team go ahead with it? She had to admit she leaned some on Tahno for the actual tactics part of being a Captain, letting him deal with the more subtle kinds of strategy. (Korra is as subtle as a bag of bricks.) But she can’t help it, or not her but somewhere in her subconscious, her mind can’t help tossing up that thing Asami’d said about her- ‘ _you’re bold_.’

“Yeah,” she says, slowly, “But, I mean-where’s the challenge in that?”

Tahno sighs, because this is honestly something she has said more than a few times, it’s not completely Asami’s compliment rushing in and grabbing hold of her decision-making. “Come on, Korra,” he says, “Sometimes I think you should have been a Gryffindor.”

She smirks. ‘Yeah, but I cause way too much trouble. Anyway, if it’s in the bag one way or the other, why waste all that time and risk losing House points for something that insignificant?”

He snorts, “You’re talking to me about risking House points? That’s rich, coming from you. How many did you lose this past month?”

“Hey!” she points the quill at him like a wand, “I gain them back, don’t I? No one rocks Defense Against the Dark Arts like I do and you know it. And I scored a whole load of extra points for loaning the school Naga for Professor Bumi. And you’re just changing the subject now, the point is that we shouldn’t cheat unless we actually need to, okay?”

Tahno rolls his eyes. “You need to stop hanging out with that Hufflepuff loser, Captain. You’re starting to talk like one.”

“You don’t get to call Bolin a loser.” She shakes her head sarcastically. “And, wow, blow to the heart. But fine. If you want it in Slytherin talk, here you go: it’s an unnecessary risk. It’s not worth the energy we put into it. Instead of doing that, you could probably just have your buddies sneak in and try to copy the Gryffindor game plans instead. You know, get a close look at what goes on in their heads. Pretty sure the Captain doesn’t keep them anywhere special.”

“You might have a point,” he admits, “Fine, we do it your way. If we lose the game it’s on your head.”

Korra makes a derisive noise. “I’m the captain, pretty boy. It’s always on my head.” She shakes her head and finally digs out some parchment. She really doesn’t want to resort to doing plain old boring homework to get obnoxious team members off her back, but some sacrifices had to be made for the greater good. “Anything else?”

He looks like he wants to say something else, but Shaozu and Ming come in through the passageway with something bulky and clinking hidden under their robes, and he just waves a hand dismissively. “Not really. See you around.” He un-drapes himself from the back of her armchair and heads over to the two of them, smiling his usual confident smirk. It gets wider when Ming pulls out what looks like a firewhiskey bottle and the three of them laugh and head off to some darker corner, followed by a small group of sixth-year girls.

She dips the quill into her inkwell and tries to think. It’s not easy. Not because she’s bad at thinking- or maybe she is, but really she just hates stillness, and restraint, and lines and lines of writing. Would rather be out there flying again than sitting here, books in her lap and quill in her hand. Her mother says she’s headstrong, but Korra just thinks there is something in her that needs to move.

Under her quill, lines form. Not writing, but the smooth lines of a cloak billowing in the wind and the rough edges of a broomstick. She’s not an artist, but sometimes it helps to sketch things out when she’s thinking.

Asami Sato’s bright idea for Potions studying is to do it in the greenhouses, with the ingredients at hand. More hands-on, she says, and that sounds appealing, because it’s quiet without being stifling and Korra has always liked the greenhouses and the multicolored plants and the fresh, earthy smells, even though she doesn’t have what you’d call a green thumb.

“Along with helping you with the ingredients and the more complicated exercises, I’m going to be working on something of my own,” she’d explained to Korra. “Hopefully watching the process will help you to some degree, but mainly I’m supposed to for the advanced class I’m taking this year. If it all goes well, I’ll apprentice to a Master and hopefully, eventually become one of my own. I’ve been writing essays on it in theory and tweaking the ingredients, but be aware that everything might not go exactly right.”

“Oh my god,” Korra had just joked, not taking it seriously, “So we both have the equal opportunity to blow the place sky high?”

She can’t imagine how many points they’d lose for nuking the greenhouses. And imagining it all coming from the Head Girl made it somehow more hilarious, although Asami had made it clear that explosions were not some of the malfunctions they had to look forward to. _I wonder what she’s making? Some kind of beautifying potion? A stronger version of amortentia?_ Maybe when it didn’t work it would spew glitter and rose petals across the room.

Potions, ugh. When she gets older and becomes a world-famous Quidditch player, she is going to buy any potions she’s likely to use. It’s not like she’s going to use the skill at all anyway, so why put all this emphasis on it in her last year?

The small figure on her parchment has long, swirling black hair. Korra taps her wand to the picture and mutters a brief incantation, feeling magic pulse under her fingertips. A second later, there’s a tiny drawing about the size of a Cornish pixie zipping around her head, and she sends it directly towards the dark corner Tahno had disappeared to. Maybe it’ll mess up his perfectly-smoothed, product-laden hairdo.

* * *

 

She’s just sitting at a table in the empty Potion’s classroom and minding her own business.

“Cheating’s wrong, you know,” Asami says from directly behind her, and Korra almost flies out of her skin because how the _hell_ does she know about that? But then she sees that Asami’s just eying up her star maps over the table. It’s unsettling because she has no idea how long the girl has been there.

“Who says I’m cheating?” Korra says, but rolls the maps up anyway. She goes for a lighthearted tone to cover up her nervousness. Asami’s the Queen of prefects after all, she might just rat her out. “I could be really good at this Astronomy thing. I might have found my true calling. I might be having secret lessons with the centaurs. You have no idea.”

“The lines on your parchment are smooth and almost continuous,” Asami says, looking faintly amused. “Like they do when someone enchants their pen to do the work. And since you can’t exactly dictate star positions, I’m assuming you have an astrolabe hidden somewhere.”

Korra throws her hands in the air. “Yes, yes, I give up. You’re a genius.” There doesn’t seem to be a threat of reporting her to a teacher in the air, so she just continues casually. “And cheating’s a Slytherin tradition. I thought everyone knew that. I’m sure they’d boot me out if I stopped.”

“They have a few traditions that I’m not exactly fond of, yes,” Asami says, and puts her books on the table. They’re mostly Potions-based, with one on various magical plants. She figures it’s because of her difficulties remembering the properties of most of the ingredients.

“Where do you want to start?” Asami asks, and Korra just shrugs in response, uninterested and frustrated she has to be here and probably the worst person to work with ever.

“Whatever you think is best?” she tries. It’s not like she’s the student aide here or anything, she’s obviously just barely managing to pass the class. Then she feels a bit guilty. Asami probably has stuff to do, too, and who wants to spend their time talking about wrinkled leaves and animal bits with someone for hours? “I guess we could just start with this class and go on from there,” she adds, making a little more effort. “We’re making that very particular good dreams potion, and I’m supposed to explain how the properties of each ingredient get the potion to do what it does.”

“Confused about how the ingredients interact with each other?” Asami asks, looking interested, although Korra can’t figure out why. This probably isn’t even that difficult for her.

“Yeeeah,” Korra draws out. “I mean, I’m pretty sure that moonstone is there to help balance everything out and the passion flower petals are pretty obvious, but why the crushed wings of a jade scarab? And the hummingbird intestines are just- so obscure I can’t even stand it.” She gestures with her hands, trying to show how totally impossible the whole thing is.

“Anyway, I basically wrote down a bunch of guesses and they’re right here,” she waves a crumpled stack of parchment in the air at Asami, who takes it in one hand and smooths it out.

“Did you fold this into a fan?” she asks, raising an eyebrow in an amazingly elegant way.

 _Are you part Veela or something?_ Korra refrains from saying. “I was hot,” she says instead. Which comes out almost like a whine and makes her sound basically twelve, great. “It was muggy and Professor Pema was brewing a tincture of rat’s teeth and dragon bile in her huge cauldron, which just makes everything steam over and it’s really unpleasant.”

Asami shakes her head, smiling, and reads the scrawled notes written across it, her expression going from amused, to neutral, to amused again, to a little distressed.

“Some of them aren’t serious,” Korra interrupts. “Don’t get too concerned.”

“You put down here that dragon dung is a great contraceptive,” Asami says, sounding torn between disgust and laughter.

“It would keep anyone using it from having sex for the rest of their lives, so it’d probably do its job just fine,” she says, and can’t be serious about that one. They laugh. “Aside from that, how bad is it? Am I totally completely dead wrong about everything, or is there hope for me yet?”

“You’ve got a pretty good grasp on the basics,” Asami says diplomatically, “But you’re missing the greater range of effects that some of these ingredients have. Moonstone, for example, is used for its extremely positive energy, and of course its affect on the subconscious mind, and also because-” she continues, describing the more intricate attributes of the ingredients, explaining more patiently than Korra had expected her to.

Turns out Asami is probably one of the smartest people Korra has ever spoken to, and that goes for some Ravenclaws too. It’s all knowledge based on plants and potions and how everything works together, but she’s so involved in it and so interested that it’s hard not to try to be interested in return, and even though she still has a shaky grasp on what Asami’s discussing, it’s obvious that she’s extremely comfortable in her knowledge of it.

Back when she’d been hooked on the idea of dating Mako, she hadn’t thought much of Asami. She’d thought the lovey-dovey gestures they made towards each other were gross and corny and told herself they were even kind of fake, and she’d liked to think Asami was, well, kind of vapid. Seemed like a lot of pretty girls were, flashy and gorgeous and nothing under the surface.

But Asami’s talking to her about ‘the intricacies in variations of moonstone’ and ‘the latent curative properties’ of dreadkite venom, and she’s faced with the uncomfortable truth that she was wrong about that, at least. Not that she’s still holding a grudge- really it’s the opposite. Once Mako graduated and headed off to train for an Auror position, she’d allowed herself to forget the whole thing. And why not? It was embarrassing. She’d let her jealousy of that short-time girlfriend of Mako’s go so far away she even forgot who that girlfriend was.

And yeah, it sucks, because Korra doesn’t like thinking about herself as a petty person. Or as a negative anything, really.

“I’m getting off the subject, aren’t I?” Asami asks, with a self-conscious laugh. “Sorry. I’m just- really into Potions, as you can probably guess. Um. Sorry.”

Korra realizes she’d been drifting off. Great, she is now not only a whiny twelve year-old, she is also one with a short attention span. “Hey, no,” she says, “It’s cute. I mean, I could probably talk about sports and butt-kicking all day, so don’t worry about it.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Asami says, “I’m a big fan, remember? I just wish I could watch a professional match.” An old wistfulness in her voice now, like she’s relating some kind of childhood dream.

“Don’t have the time?” Korra asks. Or maybe the money. She doesn’t know anything about her family, maybe they’re too broke to afford tickets or something. She’s paid fare for Bolin and his brother a few times, but Mako usually got surly about having to accept her money and more often than not refused to go. Kill-joy.

“Something like that,” Asami says, smiling down, more at the table and her hands than anything else. “I’ve only seen them playing in the animated drawings on books, or in pictures.”

The way she says it, ‘animated’ instead of enchanted or spelled, makes her realize again that Asami’s muggleborn. It‘s hard to remember, since she acts so normal most of the time. Most of them are so strange. “Oh, right,” she says, brightly, “You probably are with your family over the summer, right? You could probably drag your muggle dad to the game. So long as you’re there, they won’t alter his memory or anything.”

“I’m not taking my father anywhere someone might want to wipe his brain,” Asami says, much more sharply than Korra expects. She looks up, too, quickly and almost angry, green eyes flashing. It’s like she just insulted her.

“Fine, okay,” she says, trying to be placating. “I mean, you don’t even have to. You’ve come of age now so you can probably just go on your own if you want. It’d just have to be over the summer because there aren’t any games close to the school. Except for ours, of course. But some of the moves the Wyverns pull, I only wish I could fly like that!”

She can’t tell if it smooths it all over entirely, Asami’s lips are still tighter than usual, but eventually the conversation gets friendlier, looser, Korra gets her talking about who she’s betting to win the Quidditch Cup. The snappishness was weird, but Korra just figures that it must be hard to live in the muggle world for so long when you know there’s a better one out there. She probably can’t wait to leave home.

“Ravenclaw’s got a good Seeker,” Asami offers.

 _Yeah, and Tahno’s got a faster broom. He made sure of it._ But that she doesn’t say. She just shakes her head. “I hope you’re not betting too much money on them for the Cup, because it’s not going to happen,” she says. “And no offense to Gryffindor but we’re totally going to cream you in the next match.” Fair and square, too. As far as that goes.

Asami shrugs, a happier smile on her lips now, the sudden anger from earlier already passed. “No way.”

“I’ll bet you we will. If we win,” Korra says, “You make me a potion. Any one I ask for.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Asami smirks. It’s awful. The smirk settles onto her lips like it belongs there and it gives her a sort of seductress look. None of her expressions are okay. “If we win, you promise to do me a favor.”

“What kind of favor?” Korra asks suspiciously. “Is this a lift something heavy for me favor or one of the ones that ends up with me pretending to be your date at a really horribly awkward family gathering, because I am never doing that again.”

Asami rolls her eyes. “It’s the kind of favor I’m being deliberately vague about. But no family members are involved.”

“Not that it matters or anything,” Korra said, “I mean, since we’re definitely going to win. But that’s a relief. Deal, then. Prepare to make me something fantastic. Oh, and did we get cleared for the greenhouse yet? You said you were discussing things with the Herbology professor.”

“We’re allowed in greenhouse two,” Asami says, “Apparently they’re working with some distressing carnivorous species over in greenhouse three, and the first one has mandrakes. The one we‘re in isn‘t going to have either of that, so it‘s pretty safe, but the bubotubers might pop on their own since some of them are a bit overripe. So we should steer clear of that section.”

That’s a fun thought. Exploding potions, plants bursting acidic pus, and plants that wanted to eat her whole. And here she was always complaining there was never enough excitement at school.


	2. muggleborn theories

Bolin is wearing an uncharacteristically serious expression when she sidles over to the Hufflepuff table to greet him, which means the letter he’s reading can’t be anything good. She inspects his expression and tries to decide if it is on the low end of the misery scale: exams are being moved forward, or the high end of the scale: death in the family. After a minute she figures it’s neither, he doesn’t look  _sad_ , just…solemn. 

“What are you reading, somebody’s history notes?” she cracks, taking the seat next to him by gesturing for the other kids to move, already. They do so, with expressions of resentment that she brushes off; whatever, she’s got best friend privileges and she can sit next to him whenever she wants to. And vice versa, but Bolin rarely braves the Slytherin table. (Mostly because Tahno can be a scary asshole.)

Bolin just shakes his head. “Letter from Mako,” he says, gesturing to it. Mako’s obsessively neat handwriting is clearly visible, and she frowns for a moment and wonders what he’s been writing his brother to make him so darn gloomy on a perfectly nice Saturday. If he had to write brooding stuff, could he have had the decency to wait until a weekday? 

A significant pause, which is probably expected for this sort of thing. “So what’s it say?” she finally asks. Usually they share their typical, good-natured Mako jokes: ‘oh no, I forgot my scarf on the train, my day is ruined,’ ‘Bolin, when you become a man, never style your eyebrows like mine. They are a trial,’ but she senses today’s conversation is going to be low on the humor.

He shrugs. “Well, you know he started Auror training this year, and they’re working him pretty hard.”

She makes a grab for one of the doughnuts, piled in a huge platter close enough for her to reach. Maple frosted, yum. “Yeah, so? Did he wear out all his muscles already and that’s why you’re looking like someone just died?” As far as she’s concerned, Mako can just deal with it. Auror had been on her list of potential career choices, just behind Hit Wizard, but that was only if the whole Quidditch champion thing didn’t pan out. The training was notoriously hardcore, but she figured she could take it if Mako could. 

“No, he’s just concerned. He says there’s been a spike in anti-muggleborn sentiment lately, and it’s been causing some incidents.”

“Oh,” she says, then feels like that came out a little flat and unimpressed. Tries again. “It’s just, by the way you were looking at it, I thought there had been explosions or hexes or Mako had a broken arm or something. He doesn’t, does he?”

Bolin shakes his head. “Nah, he just says everyone’s on edge lately. There’s the anti-muggleborn sentiment,” which is normal, so normal he doesn’t bother to give it a particular gravitas, “And he says there’s rumors of something else. Like, he thinks there’s a little pocket of muggleborns and muggle sympathizers out there that are starting to act up. Rumors, he doesn’t exactly have clearance on any of this just yet.”

Political stuff, then. She’s always been pretty out of touch on the political pulse, for a Slytherin- that particular sphere never was involved in her ambitions. Korra figures she’ll have to know some of it if she’s going to be an Auror, but while she’s having fun in her last year at school, she feels like she’s allowed to remain happily ignorant. 

“Don’t worry about it too much,” she says, thinking his concern is most likely over Mako, having to deal with all of it and maybe ending up in the crossfire. “He’s just in training, they won’t call him out if anything big goes down. And there hasn’t been any sort of Dark wizard tyrant since the Phoenix King. This sounds like a bunch of muggleborns stirring up trouble with the rigid fundamentalist purebloods- it’ll settle down once something blows over. There’s usually some big showdown, the law enforcement squad gets hauled in, and someone writes a really over-the-top article about it.”

One of the Hufflepuffs across from her; a girl in a curly ponytail and a liberal smattering of freckles, makes an annoyed face, but says nothing. Her seatmate also looks irritated, but it’s the more pointed kind that means she’s a few snapped nerves away from addressing her grievance. Korra has no idea what she’s managed to say to put a bee in their bonnets, but she doesn’t really care enough to inquire after it. 

“I guess,” Bolin says, folding the letter up again. He does flick a glance, nervously, across the table at his two peers, but turns to her instead of saying anything else to them. “How’s it going with, you know, the Potions stuff?”

She shrugs. “Good enough.” That sounds too neutral. “Actually, I’m even going to say it went really good. I mean, she’s not a huge stick in the mud, she actually has a sense of humor, and it turns out I’m not a total hopeless failure at the whole thing after all. And you’d love her, Bo, she’s dragging me to the greenhouses for studying. Says a lot of the ingredients are there so it’s more hands-on.”

“Oh, hey! That’s actually a good idea,” he says, smiling a little more. “Man, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Has she seen the snapdragons? They’re almost ready to start putting out seedpods. Pema said she’s thinking about using them as a substitute for-”

Korra holds up her hands. “Okay! Oh my god, I just started this buddy study and you want to talk to me about creative alternatives?” she laughs, “Baby steps, Bolin.” A pause. “Wait, what’s a snapdragon again? Is it the snaky plant with all the tendrils or was it the actual…?”

“They look like dragons with roots and leaves,” Bolin sighs. While the two of them are best friends all the way, their interests in subjects are fairly divergent. Bolin has a green thumb and an unsettlingly good touch with all sorts of magical plants, up to the really disturbing whomping willow. To this day he insists that the thing only needs a knowledgeable caretaker to turn it into something less murderous. A firm, guiding hand with fertilizer and a bucket of plant-soothing brew.

Korra’s of the more popular opinion that all the thing needs is a few good severing charms and a bonfire, but she keeps this quiet and tries to support Bolin in his ultimately futile endeavors. In any case, she has the opposite of a green thumb, tends to treat the foliage too roughly (or something?) and on one phenomenal occasion, got puked on by an immature mandrake. She’d say nurturing wasn’t her thing if it wasn’t for Care of Magical Creatures, which both she and Bolin share as a special favorite.

So far, Bolin is the only other person that Naga has taken a shine to, without the help of  food bribes.

“It’s a good thing that Herbology isn’t one of the classes you’re trying to take for the five N.E.W.Ts you’ll need for the Aurors to even accept you,” Bolin finally says, shaking his head. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Korra shrugs. “I mean, why Herbology, though? I’ve often wondered how they plan on using that knowledge for combat purposes.”

He groans, covering his eyes. “Everything is fighting to you- you and Mako, I swear, I don’t know what’s up with the two of you. Look. Being an Auror, it’s not just about going out there and dueling with a bunch of flashy hexes, okay?  There’s also a lot of detective work, and some Dark wizards might leave Potions ingredients behind, or they could be using Numbwort to keep their victims silent, or maybe they ring their hide-out with whomping willows or dire oaks or something.”

“Dire  _oaks_?” Korra pronounces, a little terrified and mostly amused. “You’re not telling me that’s a thing. It’s a bald-faced lie and I’m calling you on it.”

He laughs. “It’s definitely a thing. They have spikes and jagged branches and heartwood tooth protrusions.”

She has one of those moments where she’s not sure she’s okay with staying in a world that contains trees with teeth. “How have I never heard about that?”

“They’re pretty rare. I had to read a whole bunch of obscure books to find the references. There’s a whole chapter devoted to them in the Plantonomicon, and I would have said they were extinct now if there wasn’t an occasional sighting in recent newspapers.” 

Korra shakes her head. “Oookay. Well, aside from all that…how’s he doing?” She means Mako, of course. They hadn’t parted on the easiest terms, but they’d never had the easiest relationship, anyway. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t still harboring a crush, deep down, but that hadn’t turned out very well the first time. Better to stick to ‘friend’ status, even if they were a clumsy sort of friends.

“Seems to be doing okay. He says he’s not supposed to talk too much about what they’re doing there, but he’s not the kind to complain even if they were working him really hard, you know? And you know he’s not going to talk to me about his social life-”

“-Because he  _has_  none,” Korra fills in the second half of the joke. It isn’t like Mako never talks to people, but he doesn’t seem to pay them much interest unless they are involved in whatever he is doing. And while Korra can understand that, since she does much the same, he isn’t even very friendly to top it off. The guy is a severe type A personality all the way. 

“Hey,” she says, “As long as he doesn’t meet Hasook there, we should be fine.”

“Oh man, Hasook,” Bolin laughs, “Who would have thought he’d go for the same job? But no, he hasn’t written anything scathing yet. And since this isn‘t like Quidditch practices, I doubt he’ll have any luck running Hasook out of the ranks because he doesn‘t like his attitude.”

Across the table, the girl with the freckles and ponytail is sketching something on a sheet of parchment, a sort of stylized face. The other girl, the angrier one, looks at it and nods to herself, contemplatively. Notices Korra watching and glares. “Are you done spying on us?” she asks, and there’s more hostility in her voice than what Korra thinks is necessary for her snooping.

“Yeah, not much to look at anyway,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Sorry for looking at your little art project.”

Strangely, the angry girl just laughs, shortly; a fractured sound. Her friend with the ponytail rolls up the parchment, sends Korra a strangely superior look, and gets up to leave the table. They trail off together, not quite touching. She catches the edge of a few words, ‘pureblood’, and ‘Slytherin.’

“Nice kids,” she says, sardonically.

Bolin shrugs, looks uncomfortable. He doesn’t go in for House feuds because, after all, he’s not that kind of person. And in fact, Hufflepuffs don’t, on the whole. But she figures that okay, there’s enough really objectionable people from Slytherin to turn off even the most laidback and adorable Puff. Doesn’t take it too personally. 

She grabs an apple and hops off the bench. “It’s been great, but I should probably head off now. See you later, okay?”

“Care of Magical Creatures,” Bolin says, “Oh, that’s gonna be sweet, I think we’re going to work by the lake with the hippocampuses.”

“Oh great, if the squid doesn’t get us first,” she jokes. “See you then!”

* * *

 

She’d read up on herbs and ground components before bed, since that’s always good stuff to put her to sleep. Usually it all blends together, that late at night, everything getting fuzzy and swirling together in a soothing tangle of words. She probably likes it because both her mom and her dad used to read to her, all the old bedtime stories. She’s talked to muggleborns about bedtime stories and theirs seem to tame in comparison. Wizarding tales all come down to blood and bone. It’s the most ancient kind of magic. Blood and bone. And so powerful it’s practically banned now from all use, because things tend to go wrong when it’s used unwisely, or poorly, or for the wrong reasons.

Of course, reading the words: dittany: an herb,  _dictamnus albus_ : false or white dittany, the burning bush, sap used in Conflagration Concoctions…no, it doesn’t quite have the same narrative flow, but it’s the nice, staccato chant of the words in her head that sends her off to sleep. 

Most of her problem with this class is- okay, magic is intuitive, right?  She likes that about it. She likes how she only has to will something to happen, to force her will into the latin words _lumos, reparo, bombarda_ , and feel that part of her reshaping and exerting itself, feeling the magic swell through her body and down her fingertips. In terms of raw power, she’s classed as one of the most formidable in her class, though everyone knows her control needs work. But magic, magic is all about what you believe you can make, what you can twist into being, and the only thing that limits it is how much you think is impossible.

And Korra _likes_  that. It makes no sense to the Arithmancy/Runes crowd, but that’s always been the wizarding way, it’s all about magic being power, expression, creativity- not fiddly ingredients and tiny measurements. Except for Potions, where something must have gone awry. Someone took their magic and applied it in measurements and it’s still around today.

She wishes she could say that to Asami and Professor Pema because that’d make her sound halfway intelligent instead of what actually comes out: “I’m not good with the plants and the stuff and the putting things together because precise measurements and complicated.”

Or really she’s not that bad yet, but sometimes it really feels that way. Her dad’s ability to speak well passed her right on by, something which she’s sure he despairs of. It doesn’t really suit a pureblood oldest scion of the ancient and noble house of Notus. 

Lavender crushes under her pestle and the thick, distinct smell wafts through the air. Thank god they are actually doing a non-stinky potion today. She doesn’t think she’d be up to dragon liver and bogeywort.

Of course, she has all the noxious odors she needs standing right next to her.

“I hope you’re working on some killer strategy,” Tahno hisses in her ear, “Feel free to take that literally.”

He is actually taking advantage of the fact that she can’t tell him to fuck off in class. Jerk.

“Can’t discuss it right now,” she says, going for ‘sweet’ but probably hitting closer to ‘murderous,’ “I mean, there are Gryffindors right here in this room, they might hear you and thwart our plots and we can’t have that. Now chop the caterpillars.”

“They’re chopped. Nice and gooey and waiting to be stewed,” he says, impatiently. “I’m just saying that I heard they got their Seeker on a new broom, and the captain’s been making some good plays lately. You might want to rethink your previous statement on…relaxing the rules a bit.”

She rubs her forehead. Was he always this whiny, or was she just letting them get their own way much too often? “Tahno, if we can’t win without-” she glances around, “…persuading people…then we really don’t deserve to call ourselves sportsmen. Or women, or whatever. Shut up.” And yes, she has a free potion riding on this match, but it’s not like she minds a bit of actual competition every now and then. Slytherin ambition is great and all, but sometimes she think they get a little boring with it. They want every victory to be assured. Where is the fun in all that?

“Come on, think about it. When was the last time you actually felt like you were playing a real game? I mean, actually being challenged, and actually worrying about whether we win or not, and maybe the other team looks really good, but you’re super excited because beating them is that much better? You’re a liar if you’re about to tell me that you don’t care about that. The Quidditch cup thing’s almost taking the fun out of the game, you guys.”

Tahno snorts again. “You really have been hanging out with Gryffindors too much, Captain.” he’s using it as the semi-derisive nickname, not the actual title. 

“Just one game, okay? And after that it’s the Ravenclaws and we all know they got nothing.”

“If we win.”

She turns to him, keeping her voice low. “Are you saying that you don’t think that our team can win based only on everyone’s actual skills and a heaping helping of good luck? That’s pretty sad.”

“If wizards believed in real good luck, we wouldn’t have to manufacture it,” Tahno said, nodding to the vials of felix felicis Professor Pema was beginning to slowly and industriously fill. “Although,  _there’s_  an idea-”

“We’re not stealing from Pema. She has Professor Bei Fong on her side and she is deadly and driven and loses all rationality when someone pulls even the tinest prank.” The lavender is a fine, green and purple power, and she tips it into the goopy, neon and sickly yellow chopped caterpillar mess. “There. It looks delicious.” 

That’s another thing though, she thinks on her way out of class. Why six caterpillars exactly? She can figure out why it’s caterpillars- the magic picks something up from it, probably something about how people think of caterpillars, and that makes it work, but why six? Who decided that?

* * *

 

“Well, I have a theory, but it’s not a really popular one,” Asami says, sitting cross-legged on the dusty greenhouse floor. Korra has the sinking feeling that she’s going to get up dustless. It’s not too hard to do, just a well-applied repelling charm, but it’s- it’s just the principle of the matter, okay?

She shrugs. “Alright. So tell me the theory.”

“Okay. Well, wizards and witches are notoriously bad at thinking in patterns. Logical thought. It’s why riddles and even mathematical thinking isn’t seen so much around here, and why 85% of magical people do poorly in muggle-taught math classes, correct?” Asami delicately strips a plant of leaves as she talks, they curl in on themselves in her hand as the vines seem to shrink away from her prying fingers.

“Well, I was home-schooled, but I guess.” Lots of wizarding families had their kids go to muggle schools for the first part of their education, but Korra’s family was old and wealthy enough to insist on private tutors, preferring the purely magical education that would give her a head start at Hogwarts. She can’t say she didn’t appreciate it.

Asami lets out a little amused sigh, “I was trying to point out that mostly, you guys- wizards and witches…”

“You’re one too,” she points out helpfully, as one of the leaves tries to escape from Asami’s grasp and manages to make it down the length of the table.

“Yes, but I’m muggleborn. As I’ve been told, frequently, it’s different. Anyway, for the most part, witches and wizards demonstrate a poor grasp of structured- instead of abstract- thinking. So I don’t think that Potions-making, the way it’s done now, would have even occurred to them, the early magic-users. We can see this in the very early potions-making books, which are very vague and the recipes brief- water, pinch of newt eyes, tongue of toad, and we have a growth potion. Only they didn’t work quite as well. I tried duplicating a few and they don‘t work at all for me, but they might work for different Potion makers.”

“Why?” Korra asked, actually curious now. As far as she knew, magic worked for everyone who could do magic. 

Asami shrugs. “No one has a really solid idea. Like I said, I have my own theory, which is sort of like some other unpopular theories, but not a lot of people want to hear it.”

Korra smiles, tilts her head engagingly. “I want to hear it. It’s not often I get to hear Head Girls with unconventional opinions.”

She looks hesitant. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, it doesn’t really have anything to do with what you’re supposed to be learning about, and I think we should focus on that, right?”

“Come on, you can just tell me about this mysterious theory and then not finish it. What is it, do you think it was centaurs or goblins or something?” she asks, tossing out some of the more cracked theories.

They’d learned some in History of Magic, of course, along with the more accepted timeline. People were always pointing out those two as having made more mysterious cursed tombs or ancient sky needles and stuff like that. Everyone laughs at the idea of centaurs waving wands when everyone knows they just stay in the forests and read stars all day, and at the idea of goblins doing anything aside from waging bloody battles, and then they move on with class.

It’s just a joke, but Asami frowns in response. “No,” she says, slowly. “But I really don’t think the possible contributions the other magical races could have made to our own craft should be so readily discounted-”

“Really?” Korra didn’t expect her to actually believe in that sort of stuff. “I mean, everyone knows they’re way too different from us to actually have worked with us in making spells. We use totally different magic and everything. You don’t think house elves made anything, do you, and they live right with us!” The thought of a house elf making potions was way too weird. “Well, for one thing, I don’t think they could even pronounce the spell names.”

“See, that’s the problem right there,” Asami says, sounding more severe this time. “You don’t even want to think outside the box for five seconds.”

“Think outside the box?” Korra parrots, looking confused. Probably another muggle saying, but it makes just as little sense as the idea of Jisa, their House Elf, stirring up a batch of polyjuice potion.

“Never mind,” she waves a hand, dismissively. “Look. You obviously have your opinions and you don’t want to hear mine, if you’re so ready to reject the other stuff offhand, because of what you think you know.”

She quiets down, unsure of what to say to that, and Asami continues picking leaves. All of her previous ones seem to have fled to safer climes, although where that can be, Korra can’t say. 

“Sorry,” she finally says. It seems like the right thing to say.

Asami shrugs. “It wasn’t unexpected. You’re a Slytherin, you’re probably steeped in that pureblood atmosphere.”

“Well, I  _am_  a pureblood.”

“There you go.” Asami smiles, not very wide, but genuine enough. “No offense, but enough said.”


End file.
